Summary

Playing the Game offers an exploration of the rhetoric of the Reagan Revolution. The book fully explores how the rhetoric supported, impeded, and affected Reagan's policy goals and political success.

Author Notes

MARY E. STUCKEY is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of numerous articles pertaining to political communication and has written Getting Into The Game: The Pre-Presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan .

Choice Review

Rhetoric has been a potent weapon in the competition for political power. Only within the 20th century, however, has popular rhetoric become the principal tool of presidential leadership and only within the past decades have academics been concerned with examining this political development. Stuckey (University of Mississippi) extends her earlier case study--Getting Into the Game (CH, Nov'89)--with this new volume detailing the tactics Reagan used to establish control over the nation's policy agenda ("such as discrediting and delegitimizing his opposition, relying upon heroes, and emphasizing values"); the reasons the "Great Communicator" lost that control following the Iran-Contra affair (". . .the American people had no interpretive framework through which they could render arms sales. . .as a morally correct action"); his limited success in regaining it; and--finally--the implications that presidential rhetoric has for US governance. Unfortunately, the result is a bland and uninspiring book that lacks the historical and political insights of, e.g., Jeffery K. Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency (CH, Apr'88) or Samuel Kernell's Going Public (CH, Sep'86). Undergraduate, community college, and public library collections. -E. C. Dreyer, University of Tulsa